Health Information Forum

Speakers

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  Dr. Lewis Berman

  Vice PresidentICF International

  Lewis Berman is an accomplished innovator in strategies, principles, methodologies, and processes for health information technology and community-based studies. He enhances ICF’s support to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with his expertise in public health, real-time data capture, epidemiologic health study and operations, survey research, and quality improvement and assurance. Most recently, Dr. Berman held the position of deputy director for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey operated by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), where he was responsible for international, state, and local community health survey consultations. He also led the methodological research into dried blood spot collection, home health examinations, and specimen collection.

  Dr. Berman is an accomplished writer and presenter on health issues, and he has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree and a doctorate in Computer Science and Public Health from George Washington University. He also completed a fellowship in eGovernment from the Council for Excellence in Government.

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  Dr. Bradford Hesse

  ChiefNCI's Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch

  Brad Hesse is Chief of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch. For more than two decades, he has been conducting research in the interdisciplinary fields of social cognition, health communication, health informatics, and user-centered design.

  Dr. Hesse was recruited to NCI in 2003 and has since been focusing his energies on bringing the power of evidence-based health communication to bear on the problem of eliminating death and suffering from cancer. He continues to direct the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), a biennial general population survey aimed at monitoring the public’s use of health information during a period of enhanced capacity at the crest of the information revolution; and he serves as program director for the Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research, a cutting-edge research initiative aimed at expanding the knowledge base underlying effective cancer communication strategies.

  Dr. Hesse has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, technical reports, books, and book chapters. In 2009, his coauthored book, Making Data Talk: Communicating Public Health Data to the Public, Policy Makers, and the Press, was named Book of the Year by the American Journal of Nursing.

  Dr. Hesse has a degree in Social Psychology from the University of Utah.

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  Charles Rothwell

  Acting DirectorCDC/NCHS and Director of the United States Vital Statistics Program

  Charles Rothwell is the acting director for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). In 1987, he became associate director of NCHS; in 2003, he became the director of the Division of Vital Statistics. Mr. Rothwell spent 13 years in the State Health Department in North Carolina and became the first director of the State Center for Health Statistics. He was responsible for health statistics, public health IT, and statewide public health planning activities and served as an adjunct assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health and the University of North Carolina, Health Services Research Center.

  Previously, Mr. Rothwell was an advisor to the Agency for the International Development (AID) and the United Nations (U.N.) for automating Peru's national statistical activities; served as a member of a U.S. multidisciplinary scientific team, providing onsite consultative services to East Germany; and U.S. representative to a U.N. technical advisory committee that helped develop electronic data transmission standards between countries, U.N. affiliates, and the U.N. He was a past member of the Robert Wood Johnson Advisory Committee on Information Technology for state governments. He helped to develop the National Science Foundation's (NSF) digital government initiative to build partnerships between computer science academia and nondefense federal agencies and was a member of the IT Board of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program and NSF Computer Science Large Systems selection committee.

  Mr. Rothwell has an M.S. in Operations Research and Systems Analysis from the University of North Carolina, an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. degree in Physics from the Virginia Military Institute. He also served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, reaching the rank of captain.